WE often hear from some self-styled theologians that the sin in the Sodom and Gommorah story was inhospitality. How are faithful Catholics to understand this story in light of the direction American culture is taking today? Fr. Regis Scanlon sheds some light on this in his   recent Crisis article.

A recent editorial in our most famous Catholic University's paper stated: "Notre Dame’s failure to educate its students about the Church’s sexual teachings is a failure that most affects its women.  Most Notre Dame women remain unaware of the mandate’s relevance to their lives even though it pertains to them especially.   Educating Notre Dame women about the Church’s important teachings on sexuality should have been one of the administration’s natural reactions to the mandate." I could not agree more. I also thought this pertinent: "Ovaries aren't Catholic...." Suzy Younger, Guest Contributor I wish someone had told me.  I wish someone had given me the truth, about my body, about my health, about my fertility, about my options.  I wish someone had been there for me.  But they weren’t.   If they had, perhaps my story would have been different. Like many women I know, the physician I saw for my health issues had only one sol...

A recent Notre Dame campus survey revealed that attending A Catholic university does not serve as a shield against temptations of the world, flesh, and Devil. Fr King, Campus minister, wisely remarked, “Pornography has grown as a problem as it has become increasingly prevalent and easier to access. It’s the nature of the temptation. The easier something is to get away with or rationalize, the harder it is to resist.” Fr. King noted that confession can help people “admit things, deal with them, and have a ‘prodigal son moment,’” but that some people may need more help. He added, “If it becomes addictive—and hopefully before it reaches that point—people need to be honest with themselves and become proactive the same way they would with an eating or alcohol issue… If it become habitual a person should seek counsel and help.”  One hears often that the “liberation” of the human libido began in earnest in the United States in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Americans...

"Lukewarm Christians are those who want to build a church in their own measure, but it is not the Church of Jesus" -Pope Francis Being lukewarm in the preaching of the Gospel is thus forbidden, lest there come about a time wherein “although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man….” Our Lord spoke often and bluntly about Hell, where we all drift unless we put on Christ, let Him dwell in our hearts, let His thoughts be our thoughts: “The gate is wide that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many.” In my years in Catholic education, I have witnessed close up a veritable silence on Hell as a reality for those who reject the Good News, rendering the teaching of Jesus Christ false, and eliminating a powerful motive for evangelization. -fr...

The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God , in addition to recounting the Church in the U.S. since Vatican II is a primer on spiritual combat in Catholic teaching. something central to the remarks of Pope Francis here .

On his Secret Info Club site, apologist Jimmy Akin has summarized the 1972 “Smoke of Satan” Homily of Pope Paul VI, as follows: “The Second Vatican Council did its work to renew the Church and to bring a new day of light. However, the Council's work has been frustrated by an attack by the devil by means of broader sociological currents that were present in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as secular social experts and social movements and scientists who lack faith and political and cultural revolutionaries. These sociological currents ("the smoke of Satan") have infected the Catholic community and caused many to doubt and trust the Church and turn away from the eternal answers it has to offer and follow after passing modern ideas that are hostile to Christian thought. In this way the devil has thwarted the work of the Council in bringing in the day of joy and renewal that should have followed the Council.” That Jimmy's summary is spot on is shown in m...

I just ran across a comment to CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT'S discussion of Ralph Martin's new book on Vatican II and salvation: "Vatican Councils II needs to be scrapped as it has inflicted massive despoliation of the church and compromised it with the norms and values of the world. The so-called magesterium of the post-conciliar papacies is ambiguous and frequently at odds with tradition. The new liturgy is so appalling that they can try to fix it as many times as they like but it will always remain protestant and anthropocentric. Imagine how many lies and how much misinformation was given to lead us into believing The Holy mass in Latin was abrogated. Whatever happened to the so-called "church of love" which has led to serial presbyterial abuse of minors and the excommunication of a Society of bishops and priests who defended Sacred Tradition in the Sacraments? In what manner can we find it acceptable to ecumenise [sic] so much it appears as though the church h...

Having just written of the New Evangelization as the way to begin the end of the crisis of faith now plaguing the Church, I love what Francis has to say here !   Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change…   —POPE FRANCIS, Easter Vigil Homily, n. 1, March 30th, 2013;  www.vatican.va

LifeSite News.  In a frank interview with the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and is increasingly being billed as America’s leading Catholic cleric, says the Church has failed to communicate its moral teachings in the area of sexuality.  He says further that the fault lies with Church leaders. “I’m not afraid to admit that we have an internal catechetical challenge—a towering one—in convincing our own people of the moral beauty and coherence of what we teach. That’s a biggie,” said Dolan. “We have gotten gun-shy . . . in speaking with any amount of cogency on chastity and sexual morality,” he added. The Church’s own failure to communicate its teachings on contraception has been one of the leading tools used against it in its fight against Obama’s mandate, with critics repeatedly pointing out that the majority of Catholic women are using some form of contraception. The Cardinal  tol...

In the first chapter of my reflections on the Church in the U.S. since Vatican II I wrote:  “…. the moral crisis facing the Church, … is not “pedophilia” but stems from an inordinate amount of active homosexuals as ordained priests and some inattentive bishops who have run interference for them, all the consequences of a failure to uphold and live the Church’s sexual moral teaching”.  George Weigel in a piece for National Review has noted this recently, and if one doubts, try and obtain a copy of Fr. Rueda’s The Homosexual Network . It is fascinating reading and will leave the reader flabbergasted.   Phillip Jenkins corroborates here . As Fr. Z has summarized in relating Weigel:  Most clerical abusers were not pedophiles , that is, men with a chronic and strong sexual attraction to   pre-pubescent children . Most of those abused ( 51 percent) were aged eleven to fourteen and 27 percent of victims were fifteen to seventeen ;   [78% o...

Defending the papacy of Benedict XVI vs . the New York Times (!), Randall B. Smith has written : Like his predecessor before him, Benedict effectively carried on the authentic reforms of the Second Vatican Council, as opposed to the false “reforms” that so often led the Church astray in the post-conciliar period.  A cardinal archbishop told an audience recently that the liturgy was so abused in the early seventies when he was in seminary that the faithful seminarians would say about the ersatz masses being done by their elders: “Everything in them changes but the bread and wine.” Benedict, by contrast, did a great deal to help realize the original intentions of the liturgical reformers.  Given that the  lex orandi  (the law of praying) is intimately intertwined with the  lex credendi  (the law of believing)—which is another way of saying that what we pray is what we believe—reforming the liturgy has always been an absolutely essential way of helping...

To promote a book I spent years in writing , I began this blog. I am a baby boomer who knows all too little about blogging and the latest techie stuff. As I was perusing various Catholic blog sites, I noticed a post by Fr. Longenecker entitled,   "The Smoke of Satan."  If one troubles oneself to read Fr.'s quite accurate assessment, and becomes interested in just exactly how, according to the Pope who coined the phrase "Smoke of Satan" the Devil made his entrance into the post-Vatican II Church in the U.S., then my book is just what the Savior may have ordered, so why don't you!?

 In The Smoke of Satan I quoted Robert Royal on Catholics and "social justice":  If we've learned anything from the past 35 years, it is that the world does not need more social workers and activists who also happen to say prayers. It desperately needs contem­platives who understand that their love for God—and the graces they get in prayer—are the source and guide to their love of neighbor. That was the revolution Vatican II introduced into the modern world. Of late Alejandro Chaufen makes a point on Catholic Social teaching that I share. He writes: As a thought experiment, let’s imagine the story of the good Samaritan taking a different twist. Let’s suppose that the Samaritan, upon spotting the badly wounded man, also sees a rich man walking by. Let us then suppose that the Samaritan is a big, powerful man who intimidates the rich man into handing over enough money to pay for the wounded man’s care. The man in need would still receive the help that he so d...

In Chapter 3 of The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God , I write: If one is worldly and hedonistic, Satan enters with temptations of the flesh. One hears often that the “liberation” of the human libido began in earnest in the United States in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Americans, troubled over repressive attitudes toward human sexuality, hoped for a revolution that would free them from outdated moral and social constraints. It resulted not in liberation but in license and a host of societal sexual crises. Since the onset of the sexual revolution, we have had to face an ever-increasing array of sexual problems. One has only to think of the tremendous increase in the number of post-1960s illegitimate births and abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, opposition to censorship of pornography (especially on the Internet), and the resulting sexual addiction (in some extreme instances resulting in murder). Consider too the tremendous blows to marriage and the fami...